Quotes of the Day

"Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. 'Patriotism' is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by "patriotism" I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one's own nation, which is the concern with the nation's spiritual as much as with its material welfare — never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship." 

--Erich Fromm, in "The Sane Society" (1955)

"We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.

Such is the logic of patriotism."

--Emma Goldman, "What is Patriotism?" (1908)

"True patriotism isn't cheap. It's about taking on a fair share of the burdens of keeping America going.

Those who earn tens of millions of dollars a year but pay less than 14 percent of their incomes in taxes, and argue the rich should pay even less, are not true patriots.

Those who defend indefensible tax loopholes, such as the "carried interest" loophole that allows private-equity managers to treat their incomes as capital gains even if they risk no income of their own, are not true patriots.

Those who avoid taxes by putting huge amounts of their earnings into IRAs via foreign tax shelters are not true patriots.

Those who want to cut programs that benefit the poor -- Food stamps, child nutrition, Pell grants, Medicaid -- so that they can get a tax cut for themselves and their affluent friends-- are not true patriots." 

--Robert Reich, economist, writer, author, professor and former Labor Secretary of President Bill Clinton's Cabinet

Memorial Day

Army Rangers in Afghanistan Release Music Video in Commemoration of Memorial Day

First Lieutenants Andrew Yacovone and Justin Wright formed a musical duo called Interstate 10, and this week they released a music video from Afghanistan.

Memorial Day, a reminder

Val: Why do you go out there?

Sandra:  Because dead people give such good advice.

Val: What advice do they give?

Sandra: Just one word- live!” 

― Tennessee Williams, Battle of Angels

Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day? (Guest Post)

Because no one has said it better than Howard Zinn :

Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?

Published on June 2, 1976 in the Boston Globe and republished in The Zinn Reader with the brief introduction below.

Memorial Day will be celebrated … by the usual betrayal of the dead, by the hypocritical patriotism of the politicians and contractors preparing for more wars, more graves to receive more flowers on future Memorial Days. The memory of the dead deserves a different dedication. To peace, to defiance of governments.

In 1974, I was invited by Tom Winship, the editor of the Boston Globe, who had been bold enough in 1971 to print part of the top secret Pentagon Papers on the history of the Vietnam War, to write a bi-weekly column for the op-ed page of the newspaper. I did that for about a year and a half. The column below appeared June 2, 1976, in connection with that year’s Memorial Day. After it appeared, my column was canceled.

* * * * *

Memorial Day will be celebrated as usual, by high-speed collisions of automobiles and bodies strewn on highways and the sound of ambulance sirens throughout the land.

It will also be celebrated by the display of flags, the sound of bugles and drums, by parades and speeches and unthinking applause.

It will be celebrated by giant corporations, which make guns, bombs, fighter planes, aircraft carriers and an endless assortment of military junk and which await the $100 billion in contracts to be approved soon by Congress and the President.

There was a young woman in New Hampshire who refused to allow her husband, killed in Vietnam, to be given a military burial. She rejected the hollow ceremony ordered by those who sent him and 50,000 others to their deaths. Her courage should be cherished on Memorial Day. There were the B52 pilots who refused to fly those last vicious raids of Nixon’s and Kissinger’s war. Have any of the great universities, so quick to give honorary degrees to God-knows-whom, thought to honor those men at this Commencement time, on this Memorial Day?

No politician who voted funds for war, no business contractor for the military, no general who ordered young men into battle, no FBI man who spied on anti-war activities, should be invited to public ceremonies on this sacred day. Let the dead of past wars he honored. Let those who live pledge themselves never to embark on mass slaughter again.

“The shell had his number on it. The blood ran into the ground…Where his chest ought to have been they pinned the Congressional Medal, the DSC, the Medaille Militaire, the Belgian Croix de Guerre, the Italian gold medal, The Vitutea Militara sent by Queen Marie of Rumania. All the Washingtonians brought flowers .. Woodrow Wilson brought a bouquet of poppies.”

Those are the concluding lines of John Dos Passos angry novel 1919. Let us honor him on Memorial Day.

And also Thoreau, who went to jail to protest the Mexican War.

And Mark Twain, who denounced our war against the Filipinos at the turn of the century.

And I.F. Stone, who virtually alone among newspaper editors exposed the fraud and brutality of the Korean War.

Let us honor Martin Luther King, who refused the enticements of the White House, and the cautions of associates, and thundered against the war in Vietnam.

Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren.

On Memorial Day we should take note that, in the name of “defense,” our taxes have been used to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a helicopter assault ship called “the biggest floating lemon,” which was accepted by the Navy although it had over 2,000 major defects at the time of its trial cruise.

Meanwhile, there is such a shortage of housing that millions live in dilapidated sections of our cities and millions more are forced to pay high rents or high interest rates on their mortgages. There’s 90 billion for the B1 bomber, but people don’t have money to pay hospital bills.

We must be practical, say those whose practicality has consisted of a war every generation. We mustn’t deplete our defenses. Say those who have depleted our youth, stolen our resources. In the end, it is living people, not corpses, creative energy, not destructive rage, which are our only real defense, not just against other governments trying to kill us, but against our own, also trying to kill us.

Let us not set out, this Memorial Day, on the same old drunken ride to death.

--Howard Zinn in the Memorial Day article that led the Boston Globe to cancel his column in 1976.

Some Memorial Day/American History

Memorial Day 2014

Happy Memorial Day, America.

You spend more on and for war than any other nation on the planet, far and away. Pretend, for a day or a long weekend you regret creating veterans. 

What kind of sick, sad, pathetic, greedy nation does that?

Answer: Us. The good, old US of A. More than any other nation, bar none. 

Happy Memorial Day you lazy pukes. 

Enjoy your picnic.

Memorial Day 2014

Memorial Day and the history

‪#‎ThrowbackFact‬: Memorial Day was started by former slaves on May, 1, 1865 in Charleston, SC to honor 257 dead Union Soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp. They dug up the bodies and worked for 2 weeks to give them a proper burial as gratitude for fighting for their freedom. They then held a parade of 10,000 people led by 2,800 Black children where they marched, sang and celebrated.


Thanks to Abstrakt Goldsmith for this nugget of history that most of us never learned in school and Punk Colours for sharing.

Memorial Day, 2013

Metal Memorials

“Hey, man, just so you know, I’m going to set this thing off.” I don’t have a metal plate in my head or shrapnel in my legs, but I carry with me something that might as well be lodged deep under my skin. After Vietnam, soldiers and civilians alike would wear bracelets etched with the names of prisoners of war so their memory would live on even if they never came home. Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continued the practice, but with a twist.

The same bracelets are adorned with the names of friends killed in action. The date and place are also included as a testament to where they took their last steps. One of the first things my platoon did after coming home was order memorial bracelets from the Web sites that specialize in military memorabilia. You don’t even have to type in the name or the date; their system uses the D.O.D. casualty list. All you have to do is filter by name and a software-aided laser will burn the selection onto an aluminum or steel bracelet. What emerges out of this casual and disinterested practice is jewelry teeming with the amount of love and commitment found in 10 wedding rings.

Every trip to the airport has the same outcome: additional security checks and a pat down from a TSA agent. I tell them it’s the bracelet that the metal detector shrieks at. “Can you take it off?” is always the question. “I don’t want to take it off” is always the answer. To some screeners my answer is a poke in the eye of their authority. Others recognize the bracelet and give me a gentle nod and a quick pat down. I suspect they have encountered other veterans like me and realize the futility of asking to have it removed. In a glass booth at the security gate is where I most often get the question, “Who’s on the bracelet?” Those who realize the significance of it usually want to know the name. I stare down and rub my fingers over the lettering. “Brian Chevalier, but we called him Chevy.”

At times the memorial bracelets seem almost redundant. The names of the fallen are written on steel and skin, but are they not also carved into the hearts of men? Are the faces of the valiant not emblazoned in the memories of those who called them brothers? No amount of ink or steel can be used to represent what those days signify.

My bracelet says “14 March 2007,” but it does not describe the blazing heat that day, or the smell of open sewers trampled underfoot or the sight of a Stryker, overturned and smoke-filled as the school adjacent exploded under tremendous fire. It was as if God chose to end the world within one city block. When Chevy was lovingly placed into a body bag under exploding grenades and machine gun tracers, worlds ended. Others began. The concept of Memorial Day nearly approaches superfluous ritual to some veterans. It's absurd to ask a combat veteran to take out a single day to remember those fell in battle, as if the other 364 days were not marked by their memories in one way or another.

I try to look at pictures of my friends, both alive and dead, at least once a day to remember their smiles or the way they wore their kits. I talk to them online and send emails and texts and on rare occasions, visit them in person. We drink and laugh and recall the old days and tell the same war stories everyone has heard a thousand times but still manage to produce streams of furious laughter. I get the same feeling with them; Memorial Day does not begin or end on a single day. It ebbs and flows in torrents of memory, sometimes to a crippling degree. Most of us have become talented at hiding our service, and safeguard the moments when we become awash in memories like March 14. The bracelet is the only physical reminder of the tide we find ourselves in.

Not just soldiers are touched by war. Chevy was a father and a son, and his loss not only rippled through the platoon and company but a small town in Georgia. The day serves as a reminder that there are men and women who have only come back as memories. Maybe the reflection on those who did not return is a key to helping civilians bridge the gap with veterans. Occasionally my bracelet spurs conversations with friends and coworkers who did not know I was in the Army or deployed to Iraq. I still don't feel completely comfortable answering their questions but I'm always happy to talk about the name on my wrist. His name was Brian Chevalier, but we called him Chevy.

--Alex Horton, a Georgetown University junior, started a blog called Army of Dude while serving in Iraq in 2006. In this post he remembers a fallen friend.

From  Warrior voices - The New York Times, this past February.

Celebration at the Station this weekend

Celebration at the Station airs Sunday, May 26, 2013 at 8pm on KCPT. 

Located at Kansas City’s Union Station, music is by the Kansas City Symphony with Michael Stern, music director. This year  they're also featuring Oleta Adams, Musicorps and host Jim Birdsall with Charles Bruffy, chorus director.

Bank of America Celebration at the Station is the largest FREE Memorial Day Weekend event in the Midwest. The Kansas City Symphony, led by Music Director Michael Stern, performs patriotic favorites against the backdrop of Kansas City’s historic Union Station. The event concludes with their wonderful, annual fireworks display. The Kansas City Symphony is grateful to Bank of America for making this gift to our city possible.

This year's Celebration at the Station will also have a variety of food truck vendors on-site, offering a wide array of food and beverage options! Including The Moose Truck,New York Dawg Pound, Cajun Cabin, Monk's Roast Beef, Kona Ice-Trucks, Jerusalem Cafe Hookah Bar, Jazzy B's and CoffeeCakeKC.

How's this for irony?

Check out this headline today from The Star:

Memorial Day winds cause power outages in Kansas

I couldn't resist the irony of this one.  High winds causing power outages in Kansas.

Of course, they need to somehow, eventually maybe put the power lines underground, if possible, but what got me was that if more of Kansas' energy needs were met with wind turbines, the last thing that would happen is power outages.

There and Oklahoma, too, for that matter.

Memorial Day, Part IV

Because maybe you don't really know:

The meaning of Memorial Day

 

Differs from Veterans Day 


Happy Memorial Day, y'all.

Memorial Day, Part II

Home From War, but Still Under Fire

T.J. Brady, 05.29.2011

Television writer and former Army officer

With our military currently fighting three wars which are creating more wounded veterans every day, the Ryan budget is a slap in the face to anyone who has ever served in uniform. (Click on link above).

We have to ask ourselves, is the Paul Ryan budget the way we want to take this country?

Happy Memorial Day, everyone.

Memorial Day, Part I

My Family's Fallen -- and Yours -- Deserve More Than Platitudes for Memorial Day

Richard (RJ) Eskow, 05.28.2011

Consultant, Writer, Senior Fellow with The Campaign for America's Future

On Monday we'll hear a lot of Memorial Day speeches about honoring our fallen soldiers and their disabled comrades. On Tuesday some of the politicians giving those speeches will try to cut benefits for them and their families. (Click on link above).

We owe our soldiers--and our country--far better.

We need to bring them home.


Happy Memorial Day, everyone.

Let's have a real "Happy Memorial Day"

Memorial Day Tribute: Keep the Troops at Home

Let's REALLY honor the troops.

Let's bring them home.

Apparently the Summer shooting season is starting early

Apparently it's beginning the Thursday BEFORE Memorial Weekend. 

First there was this:

Man shot during carjacking
I was hoping, when I read the headline, that I'd find that the person attempting the carjacking was the one shot but, unfortunately, it wasn't to be.

And that lead me to this, the next one:

One killed in shooting near 29th and Highland in KC

I hope Mayor James has some good plan up his sleeve like getting together with community, church and civic leaders all across the city so we can hopefully reduce the number of these ignorant, pointless shootings this year.  I kept hoping the last mayor would do that but no, it apparently made too much sense.

Memorial Day weekend: Bring on the Summer

Bring on the stupid:

MacGruber

Sex and the City 2

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

At least it's equal opportunity stupid--one for the guys, one for the gals and a serving of explosions on the side.

Have a great weekend, everyone.